


Pupper Parker

by Bean_reads_fanfic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Precious Peter Parker, Some Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Tony Stark Has A Heart, i made peter a corgi what about it, magic shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28032834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bean_reads_fanfic/pseuds/Bean_reads_fanfic
Summary: Bruce lifts the puppy fully from its hiding place, setting its stubby tail to wagging and its eyes to shining. He smiles at it, then raises his eyebrows at his friend. “You’re gonna have to expand on that… Did you get him for someone? Is he a gift for Peter?”The dog yips again, ears perking at the name.Coughing a laugh that sounds hysterical, Tony says, “Okay- okay, don’t call the loony bin on me until I’ve explained, but… that dog? It is Peter.”
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 76
Kudos: 394
Collections: Fics I Reread to the Nth Degree, Irondad Fic Exchange 2020, ellie marvel fics - read





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sally0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sally0/gifts).



> Happy IronDad fic exchange 2020, Sally0! I really hope you get a kick out of my interpretation of your "anything with pets or animals" prompt.

“Hey Tony? I’m coming in. I’ve been sent to stage an intervention.”

This is all the warning Bruce gives before entering the lab where, supposedly Tony is ‘working on something’; the point that he’s been ‘working on something’ for more than 48 hours without human interaction, though, is the point where his loved ones draw the line. Last time was Pepper, before that was Rhodey’s turn. Now it falls to the other member of the Science Bros. He’s honestly surprised Peter hasn’t got on him, since it’s one of their lab weekends if he remembers correctly. 

“ _Stay_. Wait, don’t— okay, fine, just...” he hears Tony hissing, voice as frazzled as his appearance when he comes into Bruce’s view. Confusingly, he doesn’t seem to be talking to the other scientist. But he does spin around and plaster on a smile as if that distracts from the disaster zone. 

“Hello, good evening!” Tony pipes, rubbing his wrist nervously. 

“It’s 10AM,” Bruce says. 

“Is it? Huh, would you look at that, isn’t time funny.”

“Tony. What have you been doing in here? You know we worry about you when you—”

A small _yip_ interrupts whatever he was going to say next. Tony freezes. Bruce looks around. 

“Was that a 'yip'?” he asks. “I think I just heard a 'yip'.”

Tony begins shaking his head like he can bat the suggestion away. “Whaaat?” he scoffs, clearing his throat and making a high-pitched ‘a-hem’ that attempts to cover a second yip. “No, nope, no yips here.”

But Bruce is already taking a turn around the trashed room in spite of Tony’s protests. There are take-out boxes, empty or part-empty and stinking (so at least Tony hasn’t been starving); crumpled paper and newspapers strewn over the floors (?), a torn-up shoe, and at least three open bottles of Nutella with spoons stuck into them that Bruce can see between the stacks of notes and scientific journals open on every clear surface. 

And over on the ratty couch, a pile of blankets moves.

Bruce stares, hand raising slowly to point at the shifting mound. “What...”

With a third _yip_ , a small face shakes its way free and stares up at him with big brown eyes. 

There’s a pregnant pause where the three of them stare at each other- Tony in defeat, Bruce in bewilderment, and the puppy innocently looking between them. 

As far as mysterious moving piles in Tony’s lab go, this isn’t the worst thing it could be. As someone fond of animals, Bruce is pleasantly surprised if still full of questions. He approaches the couch and offers a hand to the pup to sniff, which it does with a bit of shuffling forward.

“...Can I ask?” 

Tony clasps his hands in front of his chin like a prayer, giving in. “You probably should.”

The corgi pushes its white-tipped muzzle into Bruce’s palm and he scratches it behind one big ear. “Whose dog is this, Tony?”

“Ehhhh, mine? Temporarily?” 

Taking the small animal under the arms, Bruce lifts the puppy fully from its hiding place, setting its stubby tail to wagging and its eyes to shining. He smiles at it, then raises his eyebrows at his friend. “You’re gonna have to expand on that… Did you get it for someone? Is it a gift for Peter?”

The dog yips again, ears perking at the name.

Coughing a laugh that sounds hysterical, Tony says, “Okay- okay, don’t call the loony bin on me until I’ve explained, but… that dog? It _is_ Peter.”

Now, Rhodey would tell anyone who would listen that Tony was a mess in his MIT days for many reasons but one of which was for pranking- often with the roommates using one another as the subjects of said pranking. This is where Bruce’s mind immediately goes, but that was years ago. The next explanation is that Tony’s mental health is doing a fun spiral but this is outlandish even for him. 

Plus he’s been searching his friend’s face thoroughly, not bothering to hide his extreme skepticism, and Tony in this moment in all his frazzlement is as emphatically sincere as he ever is.

Bruce drops the animal.

He doesn’t mean to, but he isn’t paying attention to his grip when the pup suddenly wiggles impatiently. Tony yells out and lunges forward to scoop the little body out of the air by Bruce’s feet. “What the heck, man?!” 

The corgi, only startled by its plunge to the concrete for less than a second, lights up upon finding itself in Tony’s arms with vigorous tail wagging and several dodged attempts at landing a doggie kiss on the man’s face.

“Kid, you are going to hate your life if you do this, mark my words,” Tony warns, holding the dog’s muzzle shut with one hand and glaring into the eager little face- though the expression cracks quickly into something forced, mouth like an upside-down C as though to ward off smiling. 

“Tony,” Bruce says, not totally convinced but definitely swayed by the familiar way Tony interacts with the dog (Peter?). “What did you do to your intern?” 

The humor recedes from Tony’s expression, replaced by a small glare toward his friend. “You think _I_ did this? Why on earth- _how_ on earth?” he snaps. 

“Well, I don’t know! I’ve seen stranger transformations!” _Quite personally_ , he might add.

The pup reacts to the change in tone with a quiet whine and wilted ears, and Tony glances at it and sighs, shifting his hand up to rest on top of its head. “We’re good, you’re good,” he soothes quietly, lowering it to the floor so that, now happy again, it touches down on scuttling paws. Tony then tiredly plops onto the couch beside Bruce and stares as the pup goes trotting around their legs and then off to explore, sniffing at various aspects of the messy lab.

“I’m still figuring it out,” he begins, “but this is what I know.”

…

**2 days earlier**

…

Tony would like the record to show that for all his genius and experience and planning ahead, he has no idea how Peter gets himself into these situations. There are things you can’t predict, things you shouldn’t _have_ to predict, and this was one of those. 

It all started with the alert from FRIDAY that Tony will soon start to think of as a reminder to take his Xanax: “Incoming call from the Spider Suit.”

He pauses in his paperwork, a flare of anticipatory fondness alighting as he waves a hand for FRIDAY to pick up. Rather than the kid’s voice, however, he gets that of “Karen”.

“Good morning, Mr. Stark!” she greets chipperly. “How are you doing today?”

He rolls his eyes. Trust Peter to turn his AI assistant into a mom. “Peachy, where’s the kid?” 

It takes her a second to process his response (no doubt a far cry from how her sweeter user usually responds). “I’m calling to inform you that something has happened to Peter. I can’t find him.”

“You can’t… find him?” he repeats, standing slowly to pull up the suit’s log. “What does that mean, are you playing hide-and-seek?” 

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you what has occurred. There is no viable explanation at my disposal.”

According to the Spider suit, he’s been on patrol for the last hour and a half and the tracker puts him in his and May’s apartment...the suit having not been turned off since he got back. His vitals however are unavailable, which is the only concerning thing. That and the fact that Peter isn’t speaking up despite apparently being in the suit still.

“Karen… did Peter fall asleep without changing, is that it?” he asks. “Early turnin for a teenager, I admit, but nothing to get worked up about.”

A pause. “I can’t find him,” she says again.

Tony rolls the words around in his head, tapping a foot indecisively. May’s at work on Fridays now, he knows, so… “I’m gonna have to come down there myself, aren’t I?”

…

“Knock, knock,” Tony calls, letting himself into the Parker home without waiting for a response. He may or may not have forged himself a spare key (don’t worry about it). “Game’s up, kid, you’re freaking out your AI and thus me.”

The space is empty and quiet at first. Then a noise starts up from Peter’s room.

It sounds like… Barking? 

“This better not be a repeat of the Sandwich incident of ‘19,” Tony comments, shoving open the kid’s door. And by that, he means the stray dog Peter found on patrol, dubbed ‘Sandwich’, and proceeded to adopt for a total of 2 hours before May got home and shut that dream down quick. Tony dealt with the fallout including pleas of ‘can’t he stay at your place, Mr. Stark? I’ll come by every day and feed him and walk him, please-” to which Tony (luckily on a phone call so he didn’t have to say it to the kid’s ironic puppy eyes) shut the dream down for the second time. _“Sorry, kid, I’m not a dog person. They shed. They slobber. And I will saw off my hands before I use them to pick up poop.”_

So Sandwich was taken to the shelter, much to the angsty displeasure of one teenage vigilante.

Tony wonders if Peter has taken it upon himself to retaliate.

When he opens the door there is no Peter inside but sure enough, there is a small animal in the kid’s room, yapping away. It’s tiny save for massive upright ears; definitely a puppy, with brown fur and splashes of white on its snout and feet. The oddest part of finding it is that it’s dragging around the Spider suit- the neck of the suit encircling its waist and dragging on the floor like an overlong gown. 

“Ugh, get out of there, fleaball, you’re corrupting my tech,” Tony says, snagging the foot of the spider suit and tugging it off the little creature. The dog yelps as it pops free, shaking its head spastically and looking up at Tony as the man folds up his creation over one arm.

Catching it's oddly intent gaze, he pauses. “What?”

It yips, hopping on its feet. Comes toward Tony.

The man backs away. “Nope, no, I don’t like you,” he informs, looking it over. “...However small and tender-looking you may be. Do you know where Peter is? Peter, the kid who swept you off the street and will soon be sweeping you into an adoption center despite what he may want?”

This may have been the wrong thing to say, because the puppy’s response is to start barking like crazy again, coming forward and propping its front legs up on Tony’s shins despite his repeated attempts to shove it off. 

It’s got brown eyes, Tony notices. Intelligent-looking brown eyes. And Tony doesn’t have experience in this arena, but he’s pretty sure dogs don’t roll their eyes like this one does, in a very frustrated manner. Like Tony is missing something obvious from its point of view.

So then it trots off into the living room.

“And where do you think you’re taking all those germs?” he calls after it, following. 

The little dog is by their refrigerator, pawing up at some magnets. They’re the kind of magnets that are each a single word and come in big sets so people can spell sentences out however they want. There are several random sentences arranged between May and Peter, ranging from silly to practical to affectionate, but all of them are lost when the creature readies its little body and then leaps suddenly higher than Tony thought possible, swiping a handful of magnets to the floor. 

“Hey, hey, hey!” It repeats the action even as Tony protests, stepping back only as the man bodily puts himself between it and the fridge. “What’s the big idea, pipsqeak? Now I’ve gotta pick up this mess or it’ll be blamed on me by association. See, this is why I don’t...” 

The rest of the sentence is forgotten as he notices what’s happening: he’d thought the puppy was scrabbling at the magnets like playthings on the linoleum, but as he watches, certain words are batted apart from the rest and… organized? Its furry head is looking over the mess as if searching for what it wants, even using the tip of its nose to flip some overturned words for reading. 

And as crazy as the thought is, Tony watches the behavior for a moment in interest without intervening. Just as the dog seems to finish, looking up at him in earnest, Tony sidesteps and reads the little sentence:

BOY TURN DOG

Oh.

 _It’s been a quiet week,_ Tony concedes. _I was probably due for something like this._ So he looks the dog in the eye and asks, with extreme and uncharacteristic caution, “...Peter?”

An insistent yip accompanied by vigorous head nodding.

Tony closes his eyes as if in great pain. “If my mentee has turned into a dog then I’m gonna need more proof.”

Tiny feet scramble again and when Tony looks down, the little animal is seeking out tiles for a new sentence. He sections off “you” and “are” and “iron” before the dog stops. The word “man” is there, within pawing distance, but the little white muzzle scrunches up, eyes closing before a grand sneeze wracks the boy’s body.

The boy, now.

Because somewhere in the span of Tony blinking, the cogi sneezed back into Peter Parker, curled up on his hands and knees on the floor.

This certainly banishes the off chance that the letter thing was a crazy trick someone taught a very smart dog, but at what cost?

“Gah!” man and teen yell at the same time, the latter scrambling back to grab a kitchen towel in an attempt to cover himself while the former spins to give the poor kid some privacy.

“Peter, _why_?” Tony groans. 

“I don’t know!” Peter cries. 

“Is it over?”

“How should I know?”

“How should-” Tony throws his arms out, still turned away. “You’re the only person here who _should_ know, Underoos! Now put on some underoos!”

There’s the sound of Peter immediately darting into his room behind Tony’s back, and the door shuts with some force to it. Tony waits until less than a minute later when it creaks open again and Peter’s voice croaks, “You can look now.” 

He does. Then they stare at each other, both yielding to the silence of two people who have more questions than answers. 

Peter eventually breaks it by saying, “I’m really glad you came. You’re more understanding than May, she’d probably have tossed me in the street if she came to the same conclusion you did about me bringing home… me.” 

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.” 

…

“My gosh, what happened?” Bruce asks in real time. “Was it a wizard? Alien magic?”

“No idea,” Tony tells him with clear exasperation at the words as he says them. He sighs, absently lowering a hand to watch the dog immediately trot over and lick his palm. “We still don’t know who or what is responsible, nothing is for sure.”

“Why is he a dog again? Does he know he’s a dog again?” Bruce asks, eyeing the dog he now knows is Peter Parker with new hesitance. 

“It’s - He’s been changing back and forth, with bigger time intervals in between as they go. He seems to remember less and less each time. Like some werewolf plot except instead of killing people, he’s down to play fetch.” 

Bruce hesitates before asking, “Should… shouldn't he have little boxers on, or something?” He knows _he_ prefers it when the Hulk leaves his shorts on. He knows well the feeling well of waking up with a blackout memory and a slew of embarrassing things to own up to. 

Tony explains, “His vitals do something funky right before the shift, Friday’s monitoring - I throw him that towel over there when he's about to get human again.”

Bruce nods slowly. “And the Nutella scattered everywhere?”

“Listen, I’m getting there. One thing at a time,” Tony snaps, startling the dog. He sees and immediately softens in apology, offering his hand again. The dog eases forward, resting its chin in his palm and wagging its stub tail when the man reaches to pick it up and settle it in his lap. Bruce waits out the exchange, finding it odd and yet not odd. It’s like looking into an alternate universe and seeing Peter and Tony’s relationship slightly altered.

After rubbing the little body’s back into a curled-up position, Tony looks at his friend in all seriousness. “Bruce,” he says, blinking eyes which look suspiciously close to tears all of a sudden - something that happens less rarely when the man is tired and stressed but still only in front of a few people. “I’m afraid my intern is actually turning into a dog who won’t turn back, is that wild or what? It’s been hours now with no change and... what am I supposed to do if...”

“Tell me the rest and maybe I can help figure it out with you,” Bruce says, pouring as much reassuring calm into his expression as he can. “We’ve got a lot of PhD’s between us, after all.” He feels genuine concern for his friend but at the same time can't help but think how hilarious this will be after it's all fixed. 

That pulls a thankful smile. Tony nods, looking down at the dog now dozing adorably on his knees, as goes on with the story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dr. Strange will know what’s going on with you,” he told Peter.
> 
> “I don’t know what’s going on with him,” Dr. Strange told them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit it, I'm a 🤡 when it comes to deciding chapter counts. I promise chapter 3 will be all of it. Here's the middle and the end is soon to come ♥️

“Dr. Strange will know what’s going on with you,” he told Peter.

“I don’t know what’s going on with him,” Dr. Strange told them. 

Peter had morphed into a dog again in his presence and that’s the only reason he turned to his books for an answer at all; Tony’s pretty sure he thought they were messing with him before that, if the stressed twitch in his temple during their explanation was anything to go by. But apparently even the Hogwarts archives could fail sometimes, their usual know-it-all guardian looking befuddled in his admission. 

“Are you sure? You didn’t miss something, did you?” Tony asks from his chair, tapping his feet against the floor anxiously. Puppy Peter trots up to him with a tennis ball he’d found who-knows-where (the current room of the sanctum they are in looks a bit like a closet where lost things go) and he casts a dubious look at the kid. Peter drops the ball and nudges Tony’s foot, making the man roll his eyes before giving in. He stoops to snatch the ball and gives it a throw into the shelves. The little corgi’s paws go scrabbling away and Tony’s mouth quirks up.

“Did I miss anything…” Dr. Strange is muttering under his breath in a wrought-upon way, still leafing through an ancient-looking book. “Well, let’s see. There’s not much here for me to go on, Stark- you tell me he had an average day at school then went on an average ‘patrol’ and returned home only to turn into a dog in a very un-average manner.”

“Is there an  _ average _ way to turn into a dog?”

“Yes, several!” Dr. Strange informs, closing his book and holding it in both hands as he faced Tony. “It’s usually preceded by an incantation or some obvious display of magic, not--” he raises his octave and pep in a crude imitation of Peter earlier-- “‘I was just thinking how I could really go for some peanut butter except when I went to grab the door, I realized it was too high up and I didn’t have any hands’. Contrary to what you may think, I am not a metal detector for magic spells.”

“I guess I could go through his baby monitor footage, that kid does tend to see the best in people so maybe he missed something shady,” Tony ponders, ignoring the magician’s judgy look at ‘baby monitor’. 

Somewhere in the stacks, there’s a sneeze and a burst of sparks similar to when Tony had first witnessed a corgi turn into a boy. Peter pokes his head around a shelf, his shoulders bare.

“Could one of you hand me my clothes please?” he asks politely. 

Strange sighs then his cloak ripples to life, flying off his shoulders and scooping the pile of Peter’s garments over to him from where they’d been dropped on the floor. Peter grins sheepishly and takes them, disappearing behind the shelf and reappearing a few minutes later fully dressed. Tony notes the tennis ball now tucked in his pocket.

“Look, if we find out what the source of the transformation was, would that help you undo it?” he asks Strange. 

The wizard nods. “If it’s something within my jurisdiction, then yes.”

And so they leave 177A Bleecker Street with no more answers than before, but at least with an objective. 

“Next time you turn into a dog, I want a DNA d sample,” Tony says, mentally categorizing what a little science in his lab might be able to do for this situation. Possibly nothing, but it was worth looking into. A thought pops into his head. “Do you still have spider powers when you’re a dog?”

Peter is bouncing his new ball and watching the squirrels in the tree across the street with a bit of a glazed-over look as they walk. He gives his head a shake. “Huh? Oh… you know, I haven’t thought about it the last couple times. If it happens again then I’ll test it out.”

_ ‘If’ _ , Tony repeats in his head. _ Historically, I don’t think we’re lucky enough for it to be an ‘if’.  _

Peter says, “But I mean, it’s still me in there, right? So the powers probably transfer too.”

“I’m gonna need to get some dog DNA under a microscope before I can give a conjecture on that,” Tony replies. “I also need to grab your mask so I can take a look. And while we’re spitballing, who else do we know who can-- Hey, wait, where do you think you’re going? Kid? Peter?”

He has to take off after Peter because the teen is walking at his side one second and the next he’s sprinting ahead of him down the sidewalk and making a sharp turn around the next corner, all the while unresponsive to Tony’s voice. It doesn’t always occur to Tony because the kid swings everywhere he goes when out as his alter ego but his powers make him  _ fast _ .

“Kid… what the heck…” he pants when he catches up, gripping onto Peter’s shoulder in case the kid is possessed as well as inexplicably turning into a corgi. 

In front of them is a green expanse carved out of the city: a dog park. 

It takes Tony a beat too long to notice this, still verbally heckling Peter as he is. But the kid still isn’t responding so eventually he has to follow his gaze to the sign up ahead. And by the time he’s done that, he hears a sneeze and then instead of having a kid under his hand, he has a wiggling pile of clothes at his feet.

The man jumps with a “Gah!” and looks around, his anxiety spiking as he realizes suddenly that this can happen out in the open, too. No one noticed, sure, but they definitely will if it’s a naked teenager that reappears. 

He’s got to get Peter indoors. 

Peter, who is now wiggled free of his human clothes and racing on little paws across the grass with his tongue lolling out his mouth. 

_ Pep, I promise not to ditch you every time you suggest couple’s jogging from now on _ , Tony thinks as he runs after, the kid’s clothes draped over one arm, and feels his respiratory system protest. Why is this such a big park, for crying out loud? How much space do dogs really need to pee and chase stuff? He curses internally when he loses sight of the little brown streak around some bushes and has to pause to catch his breath.

Electing to walk, he rounds the bend and asks a couple playing frisbee with a German shepherd, “Have you seen a corgi anywhere?” They point him toward a pond up ahead and he speeds off in that direction.

It’s the yipping that hones him in on his pup, his shoulders drooping in relief when he sees the small corgi with its paws pressed up against the bark of a tree. Peter’s talking up the chattering squirrel in the branches over his head which doesn’t surprise Tony honestly; he’s a talkative child so he would be a talkative dog. 

“Hey you,” he says with about as much patience as he had after the ferry incident, giving the puppy enough pause to twist its head and look up at him approaching. “Yeah, you. One question: what the heck?” 

The dog turns back to the tree and continues barking.

Tony’s brow furrows. “Kid. Uh… you good?”

He bends down and tries again in vain to get Peter’s attention. The only success is when he tries “Peter” and the little head swivels to look at him again. So, he knows his name. But Tony’s heart sinks because other than that, this creature Tony knows is his intern seems to have lost self-awareness. Which means he has to quickly make friends with, for all intents and purposes, a genuine dog. 

“Peter,” he says again to hold the little guy’s attention. He refuses to use the baby-talk pet voice but affects the closest to it that he’s willing to go. “Hey. I need you to come home with me without making a scene. Wanna sniff my hand?” Peter does sniff his hand. Tony cautiously moves it to rub over the dog’s head and is spurred on by the doggy smile he gets for it, and the way Peter’s attention leaves the tree altogether. 

“Yeah, just me,” he says, leaning forward and scooping the little guy in his lap. He spares a wince for the fur getting on his clothes but it’s somehow not as bad as he’d have thought. He stands with the bundle in his arms, pleading/reassuring, “We’re okay, here we go--”

And just at that moment, a new squirrel dashes across the yard and up the tree they were sitting by. Peter’s ears perk and, with a wiggliness Tony was not prepared for, he  _ leaps and sails through the air  _ straight at the tree. He comes at it from a good height off the ground, but no problem: he latches on the bark by his paws as freaking Spider-Dog and starts to climb.

“Nope, nope, no!” Tony declares, dashing forward and snatching the dog before it can get too much higher. The corgi whines, barking his head off again as Tony secures him to his chest and turns to march off in the opposite direction.

“Kid, chill,” he hisses, stuffing the dog in his coat to restrict its movement as he speedwalks briskly back the way they came. “Hey, Peter. You still in there? Remember me at all? It’s me Tony, it’s just Tony. Mister Stark.” He keeps up the mantra, noticing that the wiggling and growling slowed considerably on his own name.

Sneaking a peak at the now-compliant dog, he sees human awareness back in its eyes; Peter’s head is back from wherever it went. His oversized ears are flattened to its head, cowed as Tony sighs and frees him from his jacket constraint. “Good to have you back,” he says moodily, to which Peter whines. 

“Okay, well, no big deal,” Tony says breezily, setting Peter down so he can follow along on his own feet. The car is coming into view at last. “Just gotta get you back to the car as quickly as—”

“Leia! Leia, get back here!”

The interrupting cry comes from a voice that sounds vaguely familiar to Tony, to say nothing of the way Peter’s ears immediately perk. Bounding toward them is a large St. Bernard, and its owner coming up from behind is none other than Peter’s classmate, Ned Leeds. 

Peter jumps a bit when the bigger dog beelines for him and starts combing him over with a snuffling nose. Peter trots skittishly around and looks up at Tony like he doesn’t know what to do, and Tony shrugs right back. The bigger dog’s tail is wagging fast as a wip and she gives a happy woof. 

“Oh man, I’m sorry sir!” Ned says, catching up and scooping the dragging end of his dog’s leash off the ground to try and pull her back. “She’s usually not- I’ve never had her show interest in dogs she doesn’t know before. Come on, Leia, come on, girl-” At this point the boy catches a glimpse of who he’s talking to. He cuts off, balking. “Wait-- Mr. Stark?”

Tony clears his throat. “Friend of Peter’s, right?”

“Oh my gosh, you recognize me? Wow I owe Peter, how sick is that, Tony Stark saying my name?” Tony doesn’t get time to point out that he didn’t say Ned’s name. “Where is Peter, anyway? It’s a lab weekend right? I know he doesn’t usually come over til tomorrow but also you’re here in the neighborhood. Is that your dog? I didn’t know you had a dog.”

Tony has a feeling without even having known Ned for very long that if he explains the identity of the dog and consequently where exactly Peter is, he will deal with 1. more motor-mouthing (he can only imagine what excitement happens when the two teens are together) that delays Peter from getting out of public for his impending human switch, and 2. more Peter mortification than necessary. 

He scoops Peter up in order to make their leave faster even as Ned says, “He looks like a sweet little guy, though! He must be well trained to not need a leash, my dog would- well, you saw. She can make messes if I don’t watch her.”

Tony says sarcastically, “Yeah, you could say he follows me around pretty well. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to make big enough messes, though.” 

He doesn’t notice the way the corgi in his arms looks at him, ears wilting.

Ned laughs and tries to dive into a story about puppies and messes but Tony intercepts. “Well, nice running into you! Thanks for helping me keep our mutual friend alive and out of trouble during the week.” He offers a one handed salute before leaving Peter’s friend standing at the entrance to the dog park, open-mouthed and shiny-eyed. 

They finally get to the car. “Will you pee in my car?” Tony asks.

The dog looks offended. Tony waits. The dog shakes its head. Tony puts it in the back seat with Peter’s clothes and goes to drive them away.

Halfway back to Peter’s house, the quiet dog becomes a blinking teenager who’s quick to snatch his clothes to him and change into them. No sooner does this occur than Tony begins pelting him with accusatory questions. 

“Hey, animorph, you wanna tell me what’s wrong with you? Buckle up, I’m driving while emotionally compromised. You give no warning, just acting weird one second--”

And Peter starts to talk over him, cheeks tinted red. “I can’t - I mean - I smelled the grass and then the park looked like fun so I kinda got lost in the moment--”

“...and now we know you can do this anywhere so we’ve gotta be more careful, okay? I don’t wanna be a leash parent but I  _ will _ get you a leash if you run off in crowds.”

“...It’s like narcolepsy but instead of falling asleep I’m a dog. It- it’s barkolepsy.”

They stop for breath at the same time and Tony makes an executive decision, spinning the wheel. “We’re going to the tower.”

“What? Why?” 

“Because you’re becoming more dog-like in the head, kid; I can’t leave you alone. I have better stuff to check you over at my place anyway.”

“What should I tell May?”

In times like this Tony hated being the adult. He grimaces at the street ahead. “Tell her I'm kidnapping you for lab weekend a little early.” While Peter obediently taps out a text, Tony adds in his head,  _ If we haven't got it fixed by the time I’ve gotta give you back, I'll suffer the consequences. Even if that could include her burying me in an unmarked grave before noon on Monday. _

He brushes the thought aside with confidence and begins mentally planning the tests they should try first, which is why he doesn’t immediately notice Peter still being exceptionally quiet even after not having the ability to talk is fixed. A glance in the backseat reveals the teen resting his chin on his hand and staring out the window glumly. 

Tony feels a pang.  _ Poor kid _ . “Hey,” he says. Peter looks up. “We’ll find the cure to barkolepsy soon.” 

Peter gives him a weak smile before turning back to the window.

… 

The rest of that day sees them getting the noninvasive scans out of the way (body and brain) along with a blood sample from both human and dog (no drugs detected), and a healthy amount of sending these scans (with only the most vague of explanations) to top professionals in both veterinary and human biology fields asking them if anything looks amiss. 

Nothing does. 

They have take-out, Peter goes to bed, and Tony stays up staring at the scans until his eyes are red.

In the morning when he asks Friday whether Peter is awake and she says yes, he asks her to send him up but gets no kid. After a while he goes to knock on the kid’s usual room himself, and fearing the kid might be in dog mode already, lets himself in.

Instead he finds Peter still in his pajamas, hair ruffled and searching around his room with an edge of paranoia. He freezes when he sees Tony in the doorway. They stare at each other.

Peter blurts, “I think I peed somewhere in this room.”

A beat. Tony, trying with his whole soul not to let the comment give him a college flashback, replies simply, “I have cleaning bots. What do you want for breakfast?” 

Peter wants pancakes with Nutella. 

Neither of them mention the newspaper that is spread over the lab floor the next time they meet in there. “First thing I want is to have Friday constantly scanning you so she can pick up on anything telling about the moment of the change,” Tony explains, showing Peter the spot he needs to sit in order for this to work.

They don’t have to wait very long for another shift. Tony hurries to study what Friday captured but it turns out to be only minimally helpful: she says that one moment there is Peter then the next a dog in his place-- no actual shifting steps in between that she can detect. Tony confirms this by toggling the footage in slow motion, frustration mounting. What they do learn is that right before the shift is about to occur either way, some key vitals change-- heart rate speeding up, temperature increase, etc. 

Tony has a phone call to check up on Dr. Strange, then one with Thor to ask about space magic. The latter is at some kind of party so Tony can barely hear him; he doesn’t think his friend has anything useful for him but it’s hard to tell since people started chanting in the background  _ Mjolnir! Mjolnir! Mjolnir! _ and the call got dropped. 

“What do you want for lunch?” he asks Peter when he turns into a kid again, which comes after an alarmingly long wait. The waits are definitely getting longer.

Peter bites his lip. “Nutella peanut butter sandwich?”

Tony’s brow furrows in amusement. “Are you on a Nutella kick or something?”

“Um,” Peter says. “It’s just…I really like Nutella. It has chocolate in it.”

“...Yeah,” Tony says, not getting it. There’s a pause while Peter appears to be putting something into words and to Tony’s horror, he realizes the kid’s eyes are welling. 

“You know dogs can’t eat chocolate?” Peter says, his eyes the saddest little daggers Tony’s heart has ever taken. “So if we can’t fix this…If I get stuck as a dog…I’ll never be able to…” 

“Kid,” Tony says, pulling Peter into a hug. The kid is stiff, hesitant, but he brings his arms up for a hug after a beat, and won’t meet Tony’s eye when they pull apart. The older thinks of what words of comfort he could give to reassure that he’s doing everything he can to fix this but instead he says, “We’re gonna get you so much Nutella.”

All afternoon Tony takes to looking at baby monitor footage while a little corgi he’s growing familiar with wanders the lab. He breaks out the scientific journals, namely top secret articles by SHIELD scientists, with special attention to ones involving animals and transformations. 

Evidently Peter’s stress transfers to the dog version of himself, or at least that’s what Tony thinks because he paces and whines a lot. He looks up ‘soothing dog music’ on YouTube and plays it in the lab even though it sounds like the soundtrack of hell and not in a fun way. During one of his periodic glances to make sure the puppy isn’t near anything in the lab it shouldn’t be, he finds Peter chewing up one of his own sneakers. 

He calls out, “Hey, stop that! No!” 

The corgi looks at him, but keeps chewing up the sneaker, swinging its big mass around in his small mouth. Tony sighs in exasperation. He has to acknowledge a lack of  _ Peter _ in the puppy’s mannerisms now. Pete’s getting to the point where he only knows a change happened because Tony is offering him a towel with his head turned; limited memories remain from in between.

Tony leans down, clapping his hands. “Come here, Pete!” he tries, and the same as how he responded to his name at the park, Peter drops the shoe and comes trotting over. His tongue lolls as he seats himself at Tony’s feet, looking up at him, generally being adorable. Tony sighs again and pats his head. He sees the little stub tail start to wag and the pat turns into some scratches behind the ear. 

“These ears,” he says with a snort. “These ears are how I know you’re my kid. Ears that could make Dumbo jealous, both as a human and a dog, huh?” 

The dog yips several times in a row, enjoying the attention.

“Get out of town,” Tony replies. “You don’t say.” 

In his right hand he’s absentmindedly clicking the pen he’d been holding, and at the same moment he looks up to wonder if puppy Peter would like a pepperoni off of the pizza he ordered for dinner, yet another string of barks sounds off.

And Tony gets an impulsive idea. 


	3. Chapter 3

Tony’s face fills the screen of his laptop webcam. It’s 2 in the morning. He hasn’t changed his clothes or shaved in two days now and it shows but he’s still grinning crazily.

“This is for posterity,” he says. “And for you, Pete, to get embarrassed at after everything turns out okay. But mostly this is for me to feel proud of something right now.”

In a dizzying movement, the computer is turned around and set on the ground so that a corgi puppy is now on display, sniffing around at torn-up shoe debris a few feet away.

“Peter,” Tony says. “Come.”

The dog looks up and dutifully gallops over, stub tail wagging. 

“Hey, look at you go,” Tony praises, throwing a pepperoni from off-screen. The puppy snatches it out of the air and gobbles it down, licking his lips. “Okay, ready? Peter- sit.”

The puppy sits. 

“That’s a good Spider-Dog,” Tony says, awarding another pepperoni. “Now… speak.”

Two dutiful yips.

“Yeah, you were gonna do that anyway, I know,” Tony says, rewarding this time with both a treat and a head-rub, which gets the puppy excited enough to stand up and trot around a little. Tony lowers his voice and covers the webcam. “Ah-ah, hey, what did we talk about? Get back here, sit down.”

When he uncovers the camera, the puppy is sitting again, though wiggling excitedly and watching Tony with expectant eyes. 

“So, those were the easy ones,” Tony says. “Because he does those things a lot. We’re working on a few more. I mean, what else do I have to do right now, right? Right? Anyway. Check this out.”

He kneels so he’s in the right foreground of the frame and puts out a hand. The pup immediately tries to sniff it but Tony withdraws, waiting. He puts it out again and this time the animal waits obediently. 

“Shake,” Tony says. The puppy looks at his hand. He holds it closer and repeats, “Shake.”

Peter puts his little paw on Tony’s hand. The man enters the frame further, ecstatic. In his other hand, he clicks his pen as a makeshift clicker.

“Yes, that’s it! That’s how you shake!” he says, scooping the little dog up for rubs. “Yes, have your pepperonis, you goober. Eat em up.”

Several yips follow the praise, and of course doggy eating noises. Tony sets the dog down and picks up the laptop again so that his face is in frame. 

“So there you have it, Pete. Your ‘roll-over’ is just an embarrassment, by the way, so we’re not even gonna get into that. Pretty okay, seeing as I only had a couple of hours to become a dog trainer-”

“It’s been five hours, boss,” Friday interrupts, as long-suffering as a robot can be. 

Tony frowns. “What? Are you sure? I feel like he’d be a human again by now if it was that-”

There’s an urgent, “Boss!” from Friday, followed up a curse from Tony, followed by a magical sneeze; all accompanied by a wildly blurry visual as the laptop is discarded onto the counter facing away from where a naked teenager has a towel thrown at him. 

Tony enters frame again, hand over his eyes. “Your clothes are on that chair,” he informs. “Let me know when you’re good.”

Peter takes a long moment to respond, sounding confused. “Okay…”

Tony’s forehead wrinkles under the hand still covering his eyes. “You good?”

“Nothing, I just- I was a dog, right? Now? But it was like one second I was looking at my phone and the next you were throwing me a towel.”

And now Tony takes a long time to respond.“No recollection in between?”

“Not really.”

He frowns deeper.

Peter announces that he is clothed again and Tony turns around. “Well… Hate to say it but it’s past your bedt-”

“Oh nooo,” Peter interrupts. He strides across the room, such that he’s back in frame, and bends down to pick up his chewed up shoe. He looks up at Tony, looking distressed. “Did I do this?”

“Hey, hey, hey, no big deal,” Tony hurries to assure. “You needed new kicks anyway. Listen, sit down-”

Again he’s stalled, but this time it’s because, at the word “sit”, Peter…sits. Just folds his legs and goes down criss-cross-applesauce. He’s still giving his attention to Tony, but then seems to note his new position after the fact. 

He blinks.

“I’m not sure why I did that,” he says, small. “But I really want pepperoni pizza suddenly…” 

Tony says, “Well lucky for you, there’s a box right over here. We just have to swing by the kitchen to heat it up.”

He suddenly fills up the frame, back to Peter so that the kid cannot see how much effort his face is putting in trying not to burst into laughter. The video cuts off there.

**…**

Bruce can only imagine Tony included that last bit in the story because he’s extremely sleep deprived.

“So then what?” he asks, tired by association. 

“Then… He ate pizza, went to bed, and was a dog when I came for him in the morning.” Tony looks over at the puppy, then at Bruce. He’s got something of puppy eyes himself, Tony does; the original team blamed it on the eyelashes. For this reason Bruce has to look down at his hands when he’s asked, “So, do you have any ideas?”

“Um,” Bruce stalls, rubbing a callus. Does he?

He’s saved from the silence by Friday suddenly speaking up. “Boss-”

Tony, who’d been subconsciously melting into the couch in tiredness a moment before, is suddenly on his feet and snatching up a bath towel from the floor. Bruce puts it together just in time to hear a sneeze from the puppy’s direction. 

He averts his eyes but hears Tony say, “Thank Thor and all his weird, unholy relatives, kid. I was starting to think we lost you.” A moment passes in which nobody says anything, but nobody seems to be moving either. Then Tony speaks again. “Uh, Pete? Towel?”

Bruce peeks up at the same time Tony must: Peter (screened well by the large towel Tony is holding open for him to step into) is, for all intents and purposes, spaced out. He’s not looking at anything, just standing there like a puppet with strings cut. But before either adult can do anything about it, he snaps out of it and blinks up rapidly. 

“Huh?” he says. “Mr. Stark? What’s going…” His eyes find Tony, the towel, then himself, in that order. He yelps, snatching the towel from Tony. 

Tony spins back around to afford the kid his privacy again, and he and Bruce share a stare of silent conversation.

“Kid, how’s it going?” Tony asks Peter.  _ Do you see? Do you see this?!  _ His eyes ask Bruce.

_ If I didn’t believe you before, I definitely do now, _ Bruce’s eyes admit back.

“I’m sorry,” Peter replies, sounding truly sorry, though he does not clarify what he’s sorry for.

“Shush, none of that,” Tony tells him, like a reflex.

Peter announces himself dressed, and within seconds Tony is at his side, looking at his pupils, taking his wrist for a pulse, overall looking very… dad. 

And Peter, hands fisted in the ends of his long-sleeve shirt and eyes round, looks - for lack of a better description - ‘sad puppy’. 

“I don’t remember that one,” the kid says. “It really felt like waking up, but come to think of it, I don’t actually remember waking up this morning so I guess I’ve been gone awhile. Did I break anything? I’m sorry if I broke anything. Wait, is that Dr. Banner? When did he - you- um. Get here?”

“Hi Peter,” Bruce says, stepping forward. “I hear it’s been a rough-” he winces at his unintentional pun- “couple of days.”

Tony trades him places; his friend seems lost in his thoughts as he hurries off to analyze whatever data Friday gathered from that transformation, so it's Bruce who’s left to calm Peter down. As he tries, he can’t help but see Peter looking over at Tony like a child looking for comfort only one person here can give. 

“There’s this really old movie,  _ The Shaggy Dog _ ,” Peter says, finally looking at Bruce. “It’s one May and I watch sometimes. I don’t think I like it anymore.”

Bruce smiles sympathetically. “You could give the remake a try?”

“The villain looks too much like Mr. Stark.”

“Whoever it is, he doesn’t look nearly as handsome as me,” Tony inputs distractedly. He’s spinning around in a desk chair and behind him, the lights dim to allow a holoscreen projection to pop up. “Peter,” he says, gesturing for the kid to come. “I spent last night going through the footage of your last patrol before all this started and I’ve worked with Friday to isolate and get a close-up of every single person you helped, talked to, or even passed-”

“Yikes,” Bruce mutters.

“-and now I need you to look at all of them and tell me who they are. We need to know if any one of them had a chance of doing something to you.”

Peter bites his lip, looking at the many people laid out in front of him with obvious intimidation. “Um…” 

Bruce follows after and suggests, “I’m sure any that you remember will be helpful, Peter.” To Tony, he a raised-eyebrow look of _ take it easy.  _ Tony gesticulates in vague approval. Peter looks between them unsurely. 

Cautiously he begins picking out individuals and offering a few comments about each encounter as he recalls them. There’s nothing Tony doesn’t already know, Bruce assumes, since he went through and watched the firsthand footage; so this must be fishing for anyone Peter’s unique senses got a read off of. The occasional questions Tony puts Peter to during his recollections support that idea (things like “Did you get any weird feelings from them?”). 

So it’s of interest when the kid pauses in front of a certain individual and raises his brows, saying, “Oh. This guy was odd.”

“Odd how?” Bruce asks calmly before Tony can jump in with rabid enthusiasm. 

The guy is brown-skinned and bedraggled-looking- dirty coat, long hair, unshaven. His eyes are unusually golden in color but seemingly kind as he looks right in the mask’s lenses with a weathered smile. 

Peter studies him. “I’m friends with a lot of homeless people in Queens- sometimes I keep them company when they wanna talk, or go help at the shelter when not a lot of crime is happening. I never met this guy before, and I’m pretty sure he was homeless. Some kids were picking on him when he was just talking to some pigeons at the park, so I shooed the kids away and tried to make friends with him.”

“Did you feel like he didn’t want to be friends?” Tony presses. 

Peter shakes his head at that. “No, I mean- I got us hot dogs and he was grateful and all, his vibes were just a little… cryptic? Like, he said something about the spider that gave me my powers knowing what it was doing, but that’s a really weird thing to guess correctly about, right? But sometimes people say weird things, it’s New York. Then he left really fast, and he left something behind-”

Tony interrupts again, this time by spinning around to pull up the video footage of this man’s encounter with Peter. Bruce watches it play out as Peter described in not more than ten minutes, and when it comes to the part of the man leaving, something is indeed left behind.

On the bench where the man had been sitting: a small wooden trinket, no bigger than a finger, and carved to look like some kind of wild animal. 

_ “Oh no! He forgot his…wolf… thingy?”  _ Peter’s voice on screen says, red-gloved hands picking it up to examine more closely.  _ “Karen, did you see where he went?” _

An AI responds with a direction, and Peter swings off to catch up. After a few minutes of searching in vain, he comes to a perch atop a building. 

_ “Aw man, that guy was fast. I guess I’ll keep it with me until I see him again.”  _

Tony freezes it there. 

Nobody says anything until Tony slowly spins to look at Peter, his voice neutral. “Where is that key chain now, Peter?”

“I- I- I don’t know,” Peter admits. “I went home right after that, and that’s when I-”

“Turned. Into. A. Corgi,” Tony says, closing his eyes.

“We can find that guy, Tony,” Bruce interjects. “That’s what’s important.” Because he senses it: Tony getting testy and Peter trying to sink into the floor. “Peter, we’re gonna get you sorted. Tony’s tired and hungry, okay? Let’s all take a breather-”

And then-

_ Then _ -

Where there were three of them gathered there one second, the next second there are inexplicably four. There isn’t even a sparkly portal to announce him the way Dr. Strange uses; more like they just blink and he’s there. All of them startle wildly, even the newcomer: Peter nearly leaping to the ceiling with a yelp, Tony getting to his feet fast enough that his chair goes rolling backwards, Bruce feeling his pulse jump into green-danger-zone-

And him. The homeless man from the video, looking confusedly back at them like he’s just as unclear on how he turned their panic triangle into a panic square. 

“Okay,” Bruce says weakly, in a way that really means ‘why did I come here today’. 

“Yeah, okay,  _ why _ ?” Tony is saying, indignant, and pushing himself in front of Peter. He obviously recognizes the guy as Bruce does, because he squints and says, “It’s you.”

The man, looking as wildly unkempt as he had in the video moments before, rubs his wispy chin and looks around at the lab he’s now occupying. “Well this is unexpected,” he says in a baritone voice. “Huh. My apologies. Drat, spell must’ve been off - I’ve never seen this place in my life.” He chuckles to himself.

“Listen, Hobo witch doctor whoever-you-are-” Tony spits. 

“Mr. Stark!” Peter hisses, pushing past the shield Tony’s trying to keep over him. “‘Hobo’ is an offensive term to the homeless!”

Tony looks at him sideways, incredulous. “He’s not really homeless, kid, or if he is- well, he’s obviously not whoever he told you he was, don’t you get that? He’s-”

“Ezekiel,” says the stranger pleasantly. “Former member of man’s society, current nomad slash student of mother nature, and unfortunately longtime misplacer of objects. I hate to spook and run, but you see, I’m looking for a totem of mine I’ve dropped somewhere. I’d better be going.”

“Wait!” Bruce says, reaching out to stop the man from doing whatever teleporting he might do, dots connecting. He points to Peter. “This kid took your- your totem. Now he keeps turning into a dog. Can you fix him?”

Ezekiel looks at Bruce, then at Peter, confused. “Sorry, who is this?”

“Spider-Man,” Bruce says.

Tony inhales sharply, turning annoyed eyes on Bruce. “Excuse you?” he says lowly.

“He can’t help fix this if he doesn’t know, Tony,” Bruce insists, unapologetic. “And he’s gotta be able to fix this, clearly he’s a magic-user and clearly it wasn’t intended with malice- why else would he be looking for the thing that Peter found?” 

Despite his and Tony’s exchange, Ezekiel and Peter are still looking at one another. Peter steps forward.

“I found the wooden animal thing you left at the park after we talked, and I tried to return it to you,” he says earnestly. “I meant to give it back the next time I saw you around, but I… haven’t had a chance.”

“He’s been turning into a dog,” Bruce reiterates.

“Puppy,” Tony edits, still grumpy. “Small.”

Peter glances at them then back to Ezekiel. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure where it is. Probably my house. If we find it, can you reverse whatever is happening to me?”

They go quiet, staring at Ezekiel. The stranger’s face still looks mildly puzzled as he clarifies, “You’re Spider-Man, child? You took my totem?”

Peter nods.

“...and it’s turning you into a puppy?” An edge of humor cracks Ezekiel’s confusion. “Don’t misunderstand,” he says, before anyone (Tony) can call him out on the amusement. “It’s just that- well, to summarize things, totems create mystic links between oneself and certain animals so as to bestow supernatural abilities. That one, well, its intent was to have a ‘werewolf’ effect by bringing out one’s inner beast.” 

Another pause. Bruce laughs and earns another offended look from Tony.

“What I’m hearing is that this could’ve been much worse,” he says, shrugging. “Good thing Peter’s inner beast is a corgi.”

Peter immediately goes red. “Dr. Banner…” 

“Nevermind that, I can fix the problem,” Ezekiel says, striding forward and pulling up his sleeves. Tony keeps close but allows the stranger to hover a hand over Peter as though feeling his aura or something. He smiles. “Well well, my spell was correct after all- the totem is right here. That’s what I meant to do, take myself to the location of the totem. Since you kept it on your person without the proper protection, you absorbed it right up.”

“Absorb-”

Tony’s cut off by the man’s hand suddenly glowing white in the first obvious display of magic any of this has involved. The glow seems to draw straight from the air around it until it covers his hand for a moment. When it recedes, the wooden totem is held in his fingers. 

Ezekiel grips it and withdraws his hand. “There we are!” he says, tucking it away into a jacket that Bruce can now only assume is filled with other such objects.

Anticlimactic fix, but why look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

“That was in me?” Peter squeeks, putting a hand on his chest like he might find the hole it left. 

Ezekiel doesn’t clarify the physics of it. What he does say is, “You won’t have puppy troubles anymore,” and that’s good enough for Bruce. 

He thanks the man, and even Tony collapses back onto his ratty couch in a show of both trust -letting his guard down- and relief. And perhaps that sleep-deprivation once again kicking in. Ezekiel is gracious, and apologetic even for mixing Peter up in this.

“I meant what I told you in the park, young man,” he says, shaking Peter’s hand with two of his own. “You have a kind soul; that spider knew what it was doing when it transferred its life force to you. Animals know more than you think, you know.”

Peter thanks him politely, but he looks as bemused at that as Bruce feels.

And then, his entire stay having been no longer than ten minutes, Ezekiel evaporates out of their lives once more.

Tony’s first act is to stretch out horizontally right where he is, back to them. “Well, I’m going to sleep now. Friday, if anyone needs me in the next 5-6 hours… send them to voicemail.”

“Happily, Boss.”

Bruce sighs, looking at Peter. “Then my work here is done. I was sent to get him to sleep, after all. Will you be okay from now on?

Peter smiles weakly at him and nods. 

At the last second, Bruce glances back and sees Peter already picking up around the lab - closing Nutella bottles and quietly picking up newsprint. Just before Bruce turns and leaves, Peter grabs a blanket from off the back of the couch and lays it over Tony, who is clearly already on his way to snoring.

Loyal kid.  _ Man’s best friend, you might even say.  _

Bruce snorts. 

… 

**1 week later**

…

Tony does not, for the life of him, know why he had to beg May and Pepper to have a girl’s night as an excuse to get Peter dropped off back at the tower. What he knows is that he’s texted the kid every day since last Sunday to check in on him- make sure he’s truly back to normal and such- and contrary to what he knows of Peter, the kid in turn has given him little more than one-word responses or thumbs-up emojis. 

So he’s pretty sure that means he’s hiding something. Tony can’t believe he’s gotten uncool enough to say a teenager is hiding things from him. 

“Pass me a garlic clove, young padawan,” he tosses over his shoulder. Peter’s usually over for circumstances such as lab weekends and Spider-Man training, never this… dinner and movie night. 

Peter puts down the knife from chopping onions and does so obediently, eyes back on his job in moments with no return jabber to spare: definitely off. 

Tony squints thoughtfully at the ceiling before trying again. 

“So how’s your week been?”

“Good.”

“...Just good? Come on, I usually get a bit more from you than that. I’m even asking for it, this time.” He laughs and elbows Peter, but if anything the latter seems to tense. 

“Um,” he says, soft. “Well, I… ate lots of chocolate.”

Tony snorts fondly. “Good to know. You may appreciate that I in fact researched some foods that are toxic to dogs, and those are what we’re putting together for dinner tonight.”

Peter gives him his first smile, a weary little thing. “Ha, of course you did. Thanks for that.”

“Pft, I should thank you. Giving me a reason to cook.”

Another not-quite-comfortable silence. Tony’s stewing around other ways to get a conversation going, but he doesn’t get a chance to use one. Peter speaks up of his own accord and he does it with a statement that comes out of left field.

“Mr. Stark… I’m… sorry if I’m ever a burden.” 

Tony whips his head to look at him. “Come again?” 

Peter doesn’t look at him at first, simply bites his lip before slowly making eye contact. “I said sorry because I know I can be-”

“No, I heard you fine,” Tony says incredulously. “I’m just wondering why in the world you would think you’re a burden.”

Shrugging, Peter goes to the sink to wash his hands and answers far too lightly, “Well I follow you around probably more than you’d like. And I tend to make messes. Last weekend is just one example.”

Tony has all his attention on Peter now, is facing him fully when he turns back around from the sink so that they’re staring at one another, Peter twisting his hands together in a towel nervously and Tony just scouring his memory for why this has come up. Something about Peter’s carefully recited words ring familiar, and that’s when he remembers:

It’s a callback to what he told Ned at the park. Some off-handed comment Tony gave about his ‘dog’ being a handful… a comment Peter must've managed to take to heart. Not to mention, during that whole ordeal, Tony was in his head with worry in a way that probably came off as inconvenienced at times. It probably did wonders for Peter to be unable to independently take care of himself the whole time, too.

“Ohhhh-kay,” he says, slowly shaking his head. “I see. Okay. Nope. We’re on the wrong page.” 

Peter’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?” 

Tony gestures between them. “We misinterpreted each other. I don’t- I’ve never felt like you were a burden.”

They don’t have the best communication with one another- haven't since the beginning- but they’re trying. Peter has tried to be more vocal about his superhero needs, which Tony has appreciated. He guesses it’s his turn to take a step toward Peter.

“The truth is,” he says, leaning back against the counter, “that before I met you, I was ones of those adult who say, with rare exceptions, ‘I could never be a kid person.’ And let me get ahead of you- I know you’re not a little kid, but compared to me, you are in fact a kid. That’s why I aptly call you such.”

Peter cracks a smile, making Tony feel, in the simplest way, like a lottery winner. 

“So, sorry to break it to you but there’s nothing you can do to get rid of me now. Get turned into a dog, a guinea pig, a serial killer, whatever- You’re stuck with me. Now if that's all, stop moping-” he comes forward to ruffle the kid’s carefully styled hair, earning a squawk of surprise “-and help me fry some chicken.” 

The kid grins for real at him when he takes his hand away, though his own hands come up to fix his hair. Dork. “Okay. That's- Thank you.” A pause. “Can I just point something out?”

“Shoot.”

“You know that’s the secret to becoming a pet person too, right? Just finding the  _ right _ pet?”

Given how he oddly missed having an ankle-height companion this week, Tony thinks he does know that. “Oh. Huh.” 

“So can we get a pet for the tower?”

Tony laughs, full and real. “You haven’t got me wrapped around your finger quite that much.”

In the content white noise that follows, filled with popping as their dinner begins to cook, Peter tries, “But have you ever met cats, Mr. Stark?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment with what you think Tony should name his new cat


End file.
